It’s been six months since John Hunter rode Regional Transportation District light rail trains from his home in Lakewood to work in the Denver Tech Center. On a good day, the trip took 47 minutes — competitive with driving — and he loved listening to music, reading and gazing out the window.
But when RTD’s trains slowed to 10 mph last summer, his commutes took as long as two hours.
Hunter, a Wi-Fi engineer, reverted to driving through traffic — fixating on rear bumpers from inside his burgundy Highlander or blue Subaru on Interstate 25, navigating shortcuts during jams, paying for gas, sacrificing the free transit pass his employer provided and missing the “peace of mind” he had on light rail.
“It’s disappointing,” Hunter, 60, said last week. “You lose your faith and hope of taking public transit. They have all this infrastructure in place. It is just not reliable.”
RTD officials plan to eliminate the slow zones, which they imposed for safety during a catch-up track maintenance blitz, before June 1. Light rail trains would resume normal speeds around 55 mph, ending an 11-month ordeal that has shaken public confidence in a taxpayer-financed rail transit system built to ensure mobility as traffic clogs metro Denver roadways.
And RTD leaders are counting on winning back Hunter and thousands of other lost riders.
Last year, what had begun as isolated instances of track corrosion and “rail burn” defects ballooned into a major engineering burden after RTD managers, under Colorado Public Utilities Commission scrutiny, adopted a stricter, industry-standard track inspection program. Starting in May, inspectors found more and more problems that, if left unchecked, could lead to crashes.
Light rail supervisors at first estimated that slow zones would end by September. Then they aimed for February. Trains have rolled at reduced speeds, in some areas, through this spring.
RTD maintenance crews have repaired 51 miles of tracks as of this month — about 42% of the agency’s 119-mile rail system, according to records obtained by The Denver Post through a Colorado Open Records Act request. They’ve replaced nearly two miles of track. That’s more maintenance work within a year than transit crews had done in the previous two decades.
Meanwhile, light rail ridership plummeted.
The 1.1 million monthly boardings reported for January 2024 decreased by 30% to 771,000 in January this year, agency records show. On the hard-hit E-Line that runs between central Denver and the southeast suburbs, ridership decreased by 50%.
Slow zones added to separate disruptions from downtown rail reconstruction work and other projects. RTD didn’t adjust published schedules to incorporate slow zone delays, bewildering riders, and bus shuttles between stations typically weren’t possible, managers said, due to driver shortages.
Smoothing tracks
RTD crews have made “great progress” in shoring up the system, agency officials announced last week.
The catch-up maintenance relied on a track-grinding machine that smooths away rail burn and corrosion. RTD inspectors have analyzed more than 6,000 track segments since May, records show, and agency officials say inspectors check all tracks twice a week.
However, the widespread rail burn — linked by RTD to wheels slipping on aging steel tracks — hasn’t been fully explained.
RTD general manager and chief executive Debra Johnson wasn’t made available for an interview. Dave Jensen, the assistant general manager for rail operations, was also unavailable. In an emailed statement, Johnson said proper maintenance will ensure good transit service in the future.
“Anytime there is a disruption to services, even temporary, the number of boardings can be impacted,” she said.
RTD officials didn’t rule out imposing slow zones again.
“Aging rail infrastructure necessitates ongoing maintenance, repairs, and upgrades. RTD’s rail network is continually aging and will require ongoing repairs in the future. All transit agencies undertake similar maintenance work, so this effort and speed restrictions are common,” RTD spokeswoman Marta Sipeki said in an email. “As RTD is able to fully resume light rail services without disruptions, the agency anticipates a return of customers.”
“My commute became more difficult”
In the last year, the slow zones brought havoc for transit-dependent workers around metro Denver. Some riders say they’re leery of trusting public transit, especially after RTD’s failure to update its schedules to incorporate slow zones.
If light rail trains resume normal speeds, life will improve, said Adriano Bamba, a Metropolitan State University of Denver student who works in a downtown FedEx store. The unexpected RTD delays made him late, he said, forcing discussions with supervisors about pay for lost time.
He’s optimistic, noticing fewer slow zones along the R-Line he rides from Aurora into Denver, he said. Yet illegal drug use on trains also deters riders.
“Someone will start smoking,” he said. “You could start yelling at them. Or you can change train cars.”
For Thomas Charles, 22, relying on RTD trains to get to work has meant waking up early to allow for a possible two-hour trip from his home in the south suburbs to an Amazon facility in Thornton. He leaves Lincoln Station at 7:30 a.m. and seldom gets home before 10:30 p.m. “You lose sleep and energy,” he said while waiting for a train last week.
Slow zones, combined with unannounced delays and train cancellations, made him late so often over the past four months that supervisors have warned him he could lose his job if he doesn’t line up reliable transportation. Taking an Uber costs $35.
“They’ve told me that multiple times. It does not feel good,” Charles said. “I am saving up for a car.”
University of Colorado Denver student Tim Reinicke, who lives in Parker, already had shifted to driving for part of his commutes. RTD buses between Parker and the Lincoln Station run only once an hour and aren’t synced with trains, Reinicke said.
Slow zones felt like “salt in the wounds,” he said. “My commute became more difficult.”
As he spoke, he was waiting for a train to get to his linguistics class at CU’s downtown campus. He learned that rail service had been suspended through noon after a car that went off a highway overpass crashed onto the tracks below, leading to a fatal collision with an RTD train.
“I don’t know how I’m going to get there,” Reinicke said, checking his smartphone.
“I want to try to avoid driving,” he said. “I don’t like driving. I don’t want to pay for parking. It costs $7.” Not to mention gas costs — “a big motivation” for riding light rail, he said.
But driving is more reliable. “When I have to drive, that is me — actively — not trusting RTD,” Reinicke said.
Willing to give light rail another try
The Greater Denver Transit advocacy group has questioned RTD’s track inspections and lambasted RTD’s schedules as “unworkable,” rendering light rail “virtually unusable for riders” after the sudden imposition of slow zones last June.
GDT co-founder Richard Bamber, a civil engineer who worked on the construction of RTD’s light rail system, said rail burn “is not age-related” and that solutions require analysis of the interplay of steel wheels on tracks and how operators drive trains.
“We’re almost a year into this, and if there might be more slow zones imposed, it tells me RTD still hasn’t completed enough inspections,” said GDT analyst Joe Meyer, an aerospace engineer. He concluded RTD light rail “is no longer a reliable option” for consistent commutes between his home in Five Points and his office in the Denver Tech Center.
Meyer shifted to buses or drove to his office to be on time for meetings. Last week, when he was frustrated to be “watching traffic, figuring out when to leave,” Meyer decided to try light rail again — only to find service suspended after the train-car collision.
He tried again Wednesday, boarding at Stout Street and taking a seat in the front car with three other riders.
South of the Colorado Station, the train slowed to a crawl. “We may be doing 15 mph,” Meyer said, looking out the window at I-25. “It’s frustrating to see every single car on the highway flying by. My time is valuable.”
But even with the slow zone, he arrived in about 50 minutes. “The upside of a working system is so advantageous that I’m willing to keep trying,” he said.
Similarly, in Lakewood — where commuting in traffic has become such a brain-addling experience for Hunter over the past six months — if RTD can end the slow zones by June 1, he says he will try light rail again.
“I cannot wait.”
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